


After a failed Ragnarok, Valentine's Day befalls you

by Keenir



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Ragnarok, Supposed to be just Sif & daughter get introduced to Valentine's Day and they think about Loki, This was supposed to be mindless fluff, Valentine's Day, Why won't my brain let me write mindless fluff?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 12:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1225744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper introduces Sif and Ulla to a Midgardian holiday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After a failed Ragnarok, Valentine's Day befalls you

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, in my main (in progress) verse, Angrboda and Sif are cousins.

Sif came to Earth a day after Thor did, which was following an absence of several months, during which time Ragnarok had taken place. 'Which, if you believe Richards,' Tony had said, 'involves a lot more planets dying and being destroyed than even Galacticus ate.' Her sword hung at her back, glaive at her hip, shield at the ready. And in one hand was a smaller hand... the hand of Ulla, raised for Sif by her cousin Angrboda who commanded the stables of Asgard.

Looking across the table, Sif managed a smile for the brave little girl who seemed to be wearing more chocolate ice cream on her face than she had eaten. _I have no idea how to raise you, daughter. But I will try._

"Is there a battle?" Ulla asked Pepper, who was sitting and eating with them.

"Why would you ask that?"

"I hear a tumult in the streets below. Are they crying their defiance to an oncoming enemy?"

Not sure if super-hearing was normal for Asgardian kids, or if it was specifically her, Pepper said, "No. It's just Valentine's Day. People get loud on holidays."

"I can be loud," Ulla said cheerfully, perfectly ready to demonstrate, and took a deep breath to do exactly that.

"Um," Pepper said, which was enough to get Ulla to let the air out quietly. "Actually, on Valentine's Day, we make cards with hearts on them, and give them to the people we love." And then questioned whether it was a good idea to mention the hearts to members of a culture which lived for battle and had just had their end-of-everything war.

"Can I do that?" Ulla asked Sif.

"We shall," Sif said. _I missed much of your formative years. Now you are all I have left._

"I'll get the paper and crayons and scissors," Pepper said. "All the two of you have to do, is wash up and take a seat at the other table."

_Oh it's one of_ those _holidays,_ Sif thought. "Come," she said to Ulla, who all but leaped from her chair, eager to wash her hands with Sif.

* * *

"I remember doing this with my dad," Pepper said as the three of them sat at a low table - one of seven hundred imported from Japan during one of Tony's pre-Afghanistan splurges ( _everyone underestimates how many homes the Starks own, even SHIELD underestimates,_ Pepper mused) - cutting out paper hearts and coloring them. "He showed me how to make cards with hearts drawn inside."

"I didn't get to do that with my dad," Ulla said. "He's dead."

"I'm sorry," Pepper said.

"Thank you. You should have let him conquer you," Ulla said, scribbling the red on the paper heart.

Pepper held very still. "I'm...I'm sorry?"

"Good."

_Thor neglected to mention it? He knew Loki was the father, whether or not he knew I was the mother._ "Her father is Loki," Sif said, with almost the ease of Ulla. Almost because _I know what Loki is to Pepper, what the context of her brief immobility is._

"He's dead," Ulla said again.

Hoping to salvage something, Pepper asked, "Um, Sif...is there anything you and your dad used to do?"

Sif said, "When I was an infant, my father died in the war with Jotunheim. The Lord Tyr would let me spar with him and the novice Einherhar, until I was good enough to spar with the advanced classes. He never let me join, however."

Having heard some of what Asgard was like - _albeit from Thor_ \- "Because you were a girl?"

"Because my mother would have killed him," Sif said.

As she focused all her attention on making a perfect card crease, Ulla said, "My mother should have killed Thor. He put his hammer on me and left me there for half the war. He didn't even let me try to fight him," sounding as put-out as only a small child - or Tony Stark - could.

"Why would you want to fight in a war at your age?" Pepper asked, nodding her thanks to Dummy for the safe handing-over of a bottle of glue.

"Because I'm Loki's daughter," Ulla said, speaking slowly.

Sif explained to Pepper, "One of the earliest prophecies of Asgard is that the sons and daughters of Loki would take up arms in battle. That is why Thor has been confused of late - he had no real challenges in the war."

"I could have killed him," Ulla said confidently as she watched Pepper applying glue to one of the hearts and tapping it onto the card.

"I've no doubt," Sif said, kissing her forehead.

"He'll be more cheerful when that woman gives him a child to bear."

Pepper blinked.

"You know Angrboda claimed to be Ulla's mother, yes?" Sif asked Pepper, explaining by parallel.

She nodded, having picked that up from bits of various conversations. "I thought she was," Pepper said.

"I am Ulla's mother; my cousin Angrboda raised her and cared for her. Asgardians are like humans in fertilization occuring in the woman; but we move the fetus to the father until the birth." _Angrboda did all this. Her mother was of sworn loyalty to my mother, as Angrboda swore loyalty to me. I could have stepped forward and said I was the mother, and perhaps I should have. But Angrboda beat me to it, and claimed that distinction for herself - she told me herself during Ragnarok that she would have accepted however many I made with Loki. I never took her up on that. Never did my part in giving Ulla siblings._

Sif looked at Ulla working so diligently on her coloring of the heart, little tongue poking from between her lips. She looked at her little girl, so disappointed at being denied a part in the greatest and largest war of all time, now giving her all to a human coloring festival. _You're perfectly adaptable. Just like him._

_Loki died, and he never even made it to Ragnarok. He saved the universe, but couldn't last til the end of the universe._ "Your father would be full of nothing but pride for you," Sif said.

"I love Daddy," Ulla said. "Can we leave these for him when we're done?"

"We can."

"I'm...I'm sorry, but you can go talk to the dead?" Pepper asked. _I thought that was only_ until _Ragnarok._

Ulla said to her, entirely serious, "We're not allowed inside. We can put it on the doorstep of Valhalla." To Sif, "Let's make _lots_ of them! Bury Valhalla in hearts we offer up to Daddy!"

Sif smiled proudly, and Pepper wondered what she had done.


End file.
